While it might make you want to claw your eyes out, social media can help quite a bit in communicating your school’s value before people even walk through your doors. 

Yes, your real value finds its students on the mats, but you have to get them there somehow. Life has so many distractions already keeping people from trying a martial arts class, you want something near tangible to reel them in before they even get to your front desk.

First, let’s get clear: when we say social media, we don’t mean influencer culture. This isn’t about receiving thousands of likes, going viral or getting sent free stuff. It’s more akin to an identity portal: infusing a space with the vibe you want people to feel when they experience your academy. Social media is part of the way you share content that adds value to your community and gives visitors 

Even if you’ve operated for years by word of mouth, foot traffic and flyers, you will grow much faster if you branch out to the digital field. It’s just a fact of the times: people are on the internet.

So how can you do this effectively while not taking too much energy from the reserves?

Hire a social media manager

A key factor in leadership is learning how to delegate – when to champion something yourself and when to step back to let someone else shine. One of the best parts about running your own school is that you get to find the best individuals for the jobs that you don’t want to do. 

This goes on the premise that, having already done those jobs yourself, you have an acute understanding of and a respect for what it takes to do that job. But still, you might rather teach takedowns than handle social media.

If you don’t see this as something worth including in your marketing budget, try to reframe your perspective. The value conversion of money spent on social media will look a little different than direct ad-to-lead conversion, it's a long term investment. The value lies in cultivating your brand, fostering loyalty and building a lasting public legacy. You’ve already built a killer martial arts academy and community. Let the outside world see in!

Most of the time, you can find a willing student who is already social media savvy and is willing to do a membership trade in exchange for running your social media. 

You can also find someone who has a natural way with the community, like a front desk employee who already spends a lot of time in the academy, and offer to pay them a flat monthly rate for added social media management. You can negotiate the terms of posting, hours and pay, but the situation should benefit you both equally. 

Not only do you give someone else an opportunity to level up in your organization, but it allows you to think about the big picture without getting bogged down with the day-to-day tasks like posting, hashtags and engagement.

Cell phones: re-envision downtime

Typically, cell phones are a big no at a job where you need focused attention. You want to make sure that your coaches are coaching and that your First Impressions Specialists (Front Desk staff) are tracking classes, signing people in, answering emails and selling memberships. 

However, one of the things about martial arts academies that holds true across the board is that you will have down time at some point. After you’ve finished doing the laundry, answering student messages, restocking the bathrooms, counting classes and seeing if anybody has come up for promotion, things slow down. 

What you do with this time can be the difference between your employees seeing it as another job they have to grit their teeth through and seeing it as a real opportunity with potential to grow. 

If you see your staff constantly trying to hide their scroll, they may need more direction. By that we mean, find ways to explore and lean into other skills they have. You could be severely underutilizing your employees. 

Have your staff get on the mats and take pictures during classes. Start taking a photo every time someone earns a new belt or gets promoted. 

If there’s downtime between classes and some coaches are around, see if they’ll let your social media manager record a technique video – or a Tiktok trend. Create a marketing thread on an app like Voxer and let your coaches and staff know to share things in this way with your social media manager.

Your staff will stay engaged and have fun during downtime instead of slipping into Instagram scrolling, and your social media manager will have plenty of content to work with even when she’s not at the academy. Get out of the mindset that “phones out” means a disengaged employee. There’s a difference between mindless toil and meaningful work. 

Content is king

While building a successful solid social media presence comes down to the heart, the consistency and the community engagement, it never hurts to have some content inspiration. Rotate through a few or all of these prompts to keep your account visually active, fun and engaging.

Classes. Have your coaches take photos during their classes, or have your First Impressions Specialist hop on the mat to snap some shots discreetly. People love seeing pictures of real people in your community. If you can, take as many photos as you can during the day for optimal lighting. Night photos are fine too, but clean, well-lit content tends to perform best on social media!

Promotions. Seeing students beaming as they level up and receive that new belt is priceless. When someone comes to class every day and puts in the work to improve and progress, you can’t help but want to show off their success for them! The more personal your social media becomes to your academy’s community, the more real that virtual space will feel even to visitors. Post photos of your students’ successes as they earn new belts and strips!

Curriculum. People use social media for information as much as they do aesthetics and community. Take the opportunity to give the people what they want. Make a weekly Focus-of-the-Week post that highlights what each department will focus on. Students will feel like they’re a part of something bigger and get excited to come to class.

Announcements. This isn’t really an idea so much as a reminder, but if you have any events, workshops, schedule changes or academy updates, this is also where you’ll want to share them! Social media is different from email marketing in that you can blast a ton of reminders that only stay up for 24 hours in your IG Story and posts get quickly swallowed by the algorithm as well. Feel free to send out announcement reminders here more frequently than over email.

Inspiration. If you have a photographer in the community, ask them to come in one day and take some cool photos around the academy and during class. You can use these nicer images over time, posting them with captions related to your values, or the principles surrounding martial arts. You can also repost cool technique videos or martial arts memes!

Reels. At the moment, Reels still reign as the king of content for Instagram. (Assuming you’re not doing Tiktok, which also has its own appeal) Reels are videos you can compile, edit and put to trending music. If your social media manager has too much content to work with  for feeling flooded, suggest throwing a bunch of it together in a reel and adding some tunes! In the end, it’s about getting your academy out there as much as possible in the most authentic way possible.

In an era where a large portion of clientele lives online, we need to adapt to find them. It's important to learn how to wield social media as a tool rather than an impediment. A person or company’s online identity can carry as much weight as their real one. Let your virtual space be a little slice of your 3D world academy and show who you are and what you’re about.

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